They're not giving it away, rather they're essentially forming a patent oligopoly. Huawei and Qualcomm together hold the bulk of patents for 5G. It's of no value to them to try to litigate against each other. Here they're getting a cross-licensing deal that will solidify their patent licensing wall/revenues.

Is it potentially anticompetitive? Yes.

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dozerly an hour ago | parent | next [-]

No corporations would enter an agreement that is pro-competition, doesn’t make sense. That’s where government needs to step up and provide some value

	▲	AlanYx 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's a hard area for the government to navigate because IP is designed to confer monopoly power. As long as Qualcomm walks a careful line on licensing costs/behaviour, they probably think the risk of being the target of antitrust sanctions is limited or manageable. Consumers will likely pay incrementally higher prices though.

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whizzter 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Asking Gemini it seems their patents covers about 25% of the number of applicable patents, behind them is Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia.

No breakdown on the age of the patents though so it'd be interesting to see how things evolve over the years.

	▲	AlanYx 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		AFAIK, a lot of the Ericsson and Nokia patents are legacy. Companies still need to license them, but they're not targeted at the latest generation of 5G polar codes, MIMO OFDM implementations, etc. Not sure about Samsung. Qualcomm does more than 5 billion a year in patent licensing revenue. It's a licensing behemoth.